In News

Follow this topic

Bookmark

Record learning outcomes

Microsoft has said its services are being “gradually restored” following a global outage that began around 6pm yesterday (November 12) and has seen pharmacies and other health providers affected.

The technology company said many users had seen email services resume from around midday today but added: "Some users may continue to experience intermittent issues".

The National Pharmacy Association (NPA) said some members had reported difficulties communicating with local GP surgeries and some patients due to the outage.

Community Pharmacy England (CPE) said: “While certain core NHS clinical services such as the NHS Spine are separate from Microsoft 365, pharmacy teams may experience delays receiving emails from local NHS commissioners, GP surgeries, or IT suppliers, as well as disruptions to internal Teams, Outlook, and some Microsoft-related workflows.”

CPE advised contractors to use telephone lines for urgent prescription queries or clinical updates from GPs and to “invoke business continuity plans if needed”. 

An NHS spokesperson said: “With the global Microsoft issue inevitably having a disruptive impact for staff, local NHS services are enacting long-standing measures to manage IT outages and ensure critical services and appointments can continue for patients today – including using other IT systems or paper records where possible.

“Patients should continue to use 999 in an emergency, and otherwise use 111, 111 online, or their local pharmacy, and come forward for appointments unless told otherwise.”